Batavia Triathlon Report

It's a crazy sport that calls an hour plus event a sprint.- Annette Jonker, CTC

A good look at the swim layout for the triathlon. (and Melissa's best photo of the day)

I am still a relative "newbie" to the triathlon world. I knew this summer that I wanted to try the Hy-Vee Triathlon again, other than that I took me quite a while to plan my races this year. I think part of my slow planning comes from my background in running where you didn't really sign up for most races until the morning of.

Well times have changed and races are becoming more popular, and triathlons especially fill up quickly. For example, as soon as I figured out most of the Chicago Tri Club (CTC) members do Galena and Tri-Shark as their early season warm-ups, they were full.

I had to look for another option to give me a race to get under my belt before I took my revenge on the Hy-Vee course. Enter the Batavia Sprint Triathlon. I liked that I didn't have to travel for the race, saving the price of the hotel. I liked that the run is 4.1 miles, was longer than most sprints, which typically have end with a 5k. Without knowing much about it, I was in. A sprint triathlon would be a great way to see how all this training was paying off.

3:35 AM: Alarm goes off. Ouch early. It's raining. I threw the tri shorts, a tee shirt, and the flip flops on, brushed my teeth and I was out the door. Pulled up the car, tossed in the bags, and secured the bike.

I live in Wrigleyville USA, home of the Chicago Cubs and about 40 bars and nightclubs. This was one of the first times I have ever awoke before 4 AM while living here, but I knew what would be outside. Let's just say it wasn't other triathletes packing their cars. No, it was the leftovers of Saturday night's fun. And like a tuna sandwich after four days, it wasn't looking so good.

Despite having the option to sleep in, Melissa decided she would join me for the day. I was a bit surprised as she is a self-confessed sleepaholic, but I couldn't have been happier. Despite her ever decreasing patience for all of my crazy endeavors, she has come to enjoy race day. As I have learned watching my friends run the Chicago Marathon, as a spectator you can't help but feel a lot of the anticipation, excitement, and pride that the participant feels, even to the point where you typically feel very tired at the end of event(although it could also be partly due to the obscene early hours at which time you have to get out bed for these events).

So half awake Melissa and I took the drive out to Batavia, a pleasant suburb about an hour west of Chicago (or around 40 minutes at 4:20 AM).

We arrived just after 5, with the transition area open from 5-6. Already I felt rushed. The chip pick-up and number writing went smoothly. I gave Melissa a quick kiss and headed into the transition area to set up my gear.

I found the rack numbered with the range that matched my race number, found an open spot and couple of pretty friendly guys next to me. Set my my stuff out, took a quick sip of the Gatorade and decided I should hit the restroom before donning my new wetsuit.

Well it turns out I wasn't the only one with that idea. There were four stalls, and about 20 people in line. It was 5:38. I told myself, "if I can get out of here by 5:52, I should be OK." Well, I was out of the bathroom at about 5:54. On my way out I saw the line had grown to about 50. Timing is everything.

There was a lot of discussion around water temp and should you wear the wetsuit or not. Well, I decided I needed to practice with it, so it was going on. Then I hear from the PA, "The time is six o'clock. The transition area is closed. Participants please make your way down to the pool area." My first thought was, "oh crap," but I really didn't have much to worry about. My transition area was set up, I just need to toss my new CTC jersey on, spray a little "suit juice" on the right spots (a lubricant designed to make putting on and taking off the wetsuit a little easier), and put on the wetsuit.

Sounds easy right? Well I had only put on a wetsuit maybe three times before in my life, and I think the average time was about 10 minutes. But they had to do the pre-race announcements, the Star Spangled Banner, and then they were not starting in big waves, but a person every three seconds. I was around the 240 person, so I had some time.

AND it only took me a couple of minutes to get the wetsuit on (a subtle brag).

The "Swim"
They had us line up by our race number (see above, thanks to Melissa for the photos), which was also in order of the average 100m swim time we put down when we registered. I had put 2 minutes per 100, because that is my reach goal for a 1500m swim. This was a 400m swim. No worries, I was glad to see how the whole thing worked before I got in the water. As they didn't care what swim cap you wore, I put on a different color one so Melissa could see me.

When it was my turn to start, I have to admit I was VERY nervous. Not like running races, it was more of a surreal moment, one which I can probably most compare the beginning of my college boxing matches. The water temp felt great with the wetsuit, so I am glad I had it. Once I took my first couple of strokes, I was fine, but also swimming in a crowd for the first time this year. It was also the first time this year I swam in open water, but I felt much better about it compared to last year in the Hy-Vee tri.

I quickly noticed that swimming in a wetsuit was great. I felt the buoyancy right away. I kept to the inside mostly so I could see the side of the island we were swimming around on my breaths. That worked well until it took a turn towards my right and I was all the sudden pushed into traffic around the turn.

After around 80-100m it was time for a U-turn left for the second half of the first of two laps. I was feeling pretty good now, but then people started standing up. It was shallow enough on the whole backstretch you could stand. Now I had watched the first swimmers swim almost the whole lap, so you didn't have to stand up there, but it was very hard to swim around people that were walking in front of you. I did by get around a couple of people, but after a while it was too shallow to swim (as we had been told), so I plowed my way around the end of the first lap (see below).

The second lap was more crowded than the first. What I should have remembered is how short the actual swim is and just gunned it, but I think the nerves got the better of me. The second back stretch had twice as many walkers, which made the swimming very difficult. None the less, when I came out of the water I was glad to see the time on my watch was under 7 minutes. Good enough.
I wanted to focus on transitions today, and they were faster than the last race I had, but still slow. I need to remember to do my recovery from each event during the next. Still, considering I had to take the wetsuit off, and everything was wet from the rain, I think the first transition was OK. With practice they will get faster.

The Bike
The bike course was nice. There was a pretty solid cross wind on a couple of miles of the backstretch, but overall it was a very pleasant day for a ride. I tried to go out hard early, but I am not sure if that worked out. I always seem to "warm-up" on the bike, and pick up speed as I go. I averaged over 19 mph on the ride, but I still see this as one of my weak disciplines. I am going to try to get a little extra time in the saddle the next two weeks.

I felt like T2 was fast. The shoe change was quick, but I did eat a gu and take a quick sip of Gatorade (why I didn't do this on the bike is beyond me.) I say it felt fast, because according to the times from the tri it was painfully slow (third slowest in my age group?). I had all these times on my watch, but the memory was full prior to the race and I couldn't go back and look at my splits. This whole dumb move with the watch is especially annoying because there was a three minute difference between my chip time and my watch (not in my favor).

I keep telling myself that the watch splits don't matter, but I am curious as to where those three minutes went. Let's just say I am very suspicious with the tri's timing system (not helped by the fact it took them over a day to post the results).

The Run
The switch from bike to run is a tricky one. Your legs typically feel like they weigh a ton each after getting off the bike. That being said, after leaving the transition area, I felt surprisingly good. I felt like I was moving fast, mostly because I was picking off a lot of other runners.

I hit the first mile marker at 7:25, which is pretty quick for me. The second one was closer to 8 minutes. I don't know exactly what the last two were (watch and the memory issue), but I think the mile markers may have been a little off. My pace didn't drop that much.

I think I may have had four or five people pass me in the run total. I probably passed two or three dozen. That being said it was so tricky because the race wasn't organized by age group (by numbers or start times), but by estimated swimming time.

The run course was very nice. It was along the fox river in Batavia. It reminded me of running along the Iowa River in Iowa City. A wide, full, slow moving river with a nice bike trail running along it. We actually crossed over the river at the turn around point, and then crossed back as we approached the finish line.

Melissa was there at the finish, she was impressed with my day. I felt good, but I wanted to go faster. Overall I was right at the top third (179/517 finishers), top half in my age group (22/49). My goal was top half of my age group, but this is kind of a beginners tri with a very short swim (my weakest link), so I will have to put up a much better effort to keep that kind of place in Des Moines.

Final Times: Batavia Sprint Tri
(400 m, 14.7 miles, 4.1 miles; first number is my age group place out of 49 people)
Swim: 28 6:36 (1:39 per 100 m pace)
T1: 32 3:29
Bike: 20 45:28 (19.4 mph ave)
T2: 45 3:34
Run: 16 32:38 (7:58 per mile pace)
Total: 22 1:31:43

100 yards away from the finish